Crying meltdowns vs. feeling sad

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What's the difference between a crying meltdown and crying because you feel sad?

The difference for me is that if I cry when I am sad the crying is triggered by the feelings of sadness. In a crying meltdown for me it is not usually triggered by feelings of sadness but rather from being completely overwhelmed and not being able to cope with being so overwhelmed. So I don't have to be sad to have a crying meltdown. I could be way over stimulated, I could be very confused or frustrated or feeling lost or scared or not able to process stuff or even a combination of some or all of the above. And some sadness could be included in that as well. But a crying meltdown won't come from just feeling sad all by itself.

For me, the difference is that a crying meltdown is characterized by being completely overwhelmed with feelings of sadness...you feel as if you'll never feel anything but sad for as long as you live and you wish you could stop, but no matter how much you try to cheer yourself up or distract yourself, the sadness doesn't stop until the meltdown itself plays out.

I never cry during my meltdowns, I just get extremely frustrated, angry, and violent, which can lead to self-harming and damage to property (though never other people.) Even during my sensory overload-induced meltdowns, I just get frustrated and overwhelmed, I start stimming a lot, and have to flee the scene as quickly as possible. I have cried when overwhelmed by non-sad emotions such as anger, fear or relief, but those weren't meltdowns as I never lost control over my mental and physical faculties.

Thanks. I guess I don't have meltdowns. I did have temper tantrums as a kid, but hasn't everyone?

Well, I cry because of many things like sadness, anger, frustration. For me they are all mixed up.
but a meltdown is a different feeling. In a meltdown I feel like some kind of pressure is smashing me and I can't think. Usually I also break or punch things. When I am just crying it is only that, crying... I feel overwhelmed by the feeling that originated it, in a meltdown I don't feel anything just this weird pressure in my mind and can't remember it well later.
difference is temper tantrum is meant for controlling or attention and if you leave and ignore the child stops. In a meltdown they are not even acknowledging other people and will continue until the outburst calms down.

Basically a meltdown is like an attack. Total system overload.

here's an interesting chart:

[img][800:669]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Og5tegigNYo/T-Pr0hTgDII/AAAAAAAAc_c/L16KUR7EtBE/s1600/tantrum4.jpg[/img]

I mostly had temper tantrums. They did continue after age five, but only because people treated me like a five year old. Once people stopped treating me like a five year old my temper tantrums disappeared.

That is a great chart EzraS - thank you! Really shows how a meltdown is not a tantrum.

I've never really cried during a meltdown - for me it's more like a freaked out verablized panic attack featured the word "no" and me stomping off stage.

Fortunately they are very rare now-a-days but they do occasionally happen.

I had meltdowns as a child so severe they gave me a personal aide to try to control them in school, to no avail. Now as an adult I still occasionally have them. Basically negative emotion becomes so strong that you feel like you have to react. In school everyone thought I was doing it on purpose and I was punished a lot, but I was not trying to be bad, I was reacting to my inner emotional state.

My family likes to provoke me into having meltdowns whenever they see fit and I HATE IT!

I still have Meltdowns now mainly when everything gets to much, I do managed most of the time to hold it in but I still do have them when it gets really bad and that can be any time for instance now Im not feeling very good at all.

I still have them at least a few times every year, which my parents are inclined to ground me for, even though they are not my fault.

Sometimes in the past when I was younger and I was doing homework and I was having difficulty understanding how to do something, I would start crying and would sometimes hit things out of frustration, but I still continued trying to understand it, by myself or with my mom's help, and when I did I felt better. Is that considered a meltdown?